Digital Commons Network^™

Mutable Landscapes: Diversity Through The Lens Of The Earth's Biomass, Ilya Iskhakov

Masters Theses

This thesis explores conditions of mutability in the landscape through the lens of the Earth’s biomass, particularly the living beings whose systemic, functional and aesthetic values are misrepresented or undervalued. Relegated to the abandoned, derelict and forgotten landscapes, the presence of these living things has often come to represent decay, blight, lack of resources, and care. However, in the light of the global environmental crisis and in search of viable solutions to clean up the environment and curb greenhouse gas emissions, it has become apparent that the spontaneous, opportunistic qualities of these living beings can provide unparalleled opportunities to do …

Dead Space: The Changing Discourse Of Death: How To Design A Contemporary And Enduring Funeral Practice, Xin Wang

Masters Theses

My thesis seeks to design my grandfather’s cemetery to regain a piece of my personal memory. It also seeks to situate this issue in the contemporary context of the pandemic, which helped inspire my topic. I started my thesis in a very turbulent year. I found myself missing family members far away on the other side of the earth.

How are they doing now?

I suddenly missed my Grandfather’s village, which I had only visited once a year prior to the great pandemic. My Grandfather passed away when I was very young. I get along well with my Grandmother, but …

Becoming A Precipice: The Liminality Of Queer Cruising, Chance Deville

Masters Theses

In “Becoming a Precipice,” I am analyzing queer cruising areas as psychological landscapes from a queer, non-binary perspective, counter to heteronormative conventions. These landscapes are important to me, as being a full participant in this culture is my main form of sexual interaction. My inquiry is prompted by the need to interpret how this specific form of desire molds itself into visceral responses and manifestations of performative masculinity. Entering the cruising landscape itself increases awareness and intensifies the senses, in a space where signals become critical in determining transactions with other individuals beyond spoken language. These somatic reactions are uniquely …

Wounds Need Air, Camilla Jerome

Masters Theses

A personal essay in the first-person voice describes the artist’s lived experience navigating the American medical industrial complex with multiple misdiagnosed chronic pain disorders. The artist’s personal story spans thirty years and is contextualized by illness, gender, race, age, ability, class, and is grounded in the artistic expression of self. Descriptions of mental illness, physical disability, and access to proper healthcare are weaved into an examination of embodied knowledge.

Making Meaning, Eric Loucks

Masters Theses

Making Meaning explores mental health through the lens of a contemporary craft-based design practice. Themes of identity, catharsis, connection, flow, teaching, and community create a framework for understanding the role craft plays in developing and maintaining a healthy mindset. The physical pieces that result from this approach are meticulously made, highly considered, and given the quality of contemporary heirloom: a piece that promotes a kind of emotional connection and wellness in their owner.

Imaging "Interracial": Performing Racialized Desire In "Interracial" Heterosexual Hardcore Pornography, Megan Christiansen

Masters Theses

“Interracial” is a term that implicitly categorizes sex between Black cis men and white cis women within contemporary hardcore pornographic video. The artistic and research practice described in this paper is located in, influenced, and driven by pornography itself as an important entry point for thinking about racialized desire.

Looking with care and criticality at the pornographic representation of sex between Black men and white women can allow us to think about how issues of gender and race are key in constructing notions of desire and taboo in America. Through this work I begin to consider how racism and misogyny …

Loneliness / Togetherness : Interiority And Connection Under Isolation, Huaqin Chen

Masters Theses

Inhabitants’ perceptions can be greatly impacted when they are in an enforced space, a state of incarceration. That sense of confinement can cause mental or physical health issues on account of the loneliness, lack of interaction or confusion of time and space. Living through enforcement and isolation deeply affect human cognition and behavior. We can also easily find precedents of living through enforcement in the plots of films. By studying narrative, this thesis reconstructs domestic space by investigating the changes in our daily life after our current pandemic. A spatial sequence is created according to the relationwship among time, space …

Woven Healing: Reimagining The Rural Health Center, Mahasweta Jayachandran

Masters Theses

Seventy-five percent of India’s population is rural. Of those rural citizens, almost nine out of ten lack access to adequate health facilities. While the existing composition of any village in India is housing, temple, and agriculture, the physical well-being of residents has no home. When the local government builds a new isolated healthcare center, these disconnected centers become deserted and a place of unhealthy activity.

How do you effectively embed a new spatial intervention within an existing system of the village that supports health, rather than extending the boundaries of the village into sprawl? Historical study of medical practice in …

Migrating Architecture: Vernacular Futurism, Yichu Jiang

Masters Theses

The history of mankind is migration: while large migrations describe groups and communities, each individual has a unique life history of migration. When moving to a new place, singly or in groups, migrants need self-identification support to adapt to a new environment. As the built environment continuously interacts with human’s everyday life, architecture provides a stable environment, which helps to build individual perceptions in space and social relations. Therefore, architecture migrates with its population and evolves according to context.

Tulou, as a result of historical turbulence and massive migration in China, exemplifies such a phenomenon of migrating architecture. The prototypical …

The Second Home: Breaking The Cycle Of Lonely Death, Woohee Kim

Masters Theses

Lonely Death Syndrome is a phenomenon in which an isolated person suffers a lack of social relationships and dies alone. This is a serious problem in modern South Korea, particularly among poor elderly people living in Seoul. Though the government has tried to help, there is an obvious bureaucratic limit in resolving the sense of loneliness. In Seoul, Nowon-gu is one of the districts that has the highest concentration of poor seniors, and high-rise rental housing built for this population. These apartments are uniform in design in order to house as many people as possible economically in a limited space, …

Algal Alterity : A Study Of Florida's Algae-Crisis-Culture, Katelyn Flood

Masters Theses

This research critically engages with the ecology of media discourse surrounding Florida’s “harmful algae crisis” . It uses a content analysis of online news media articles to address how the presence and unique processes of aquatic algae organisms are entangled with people and cultural practices. Specifically, this work grapples with the dynamic relationship between algae organisms and the cultural production of meaning through visual imagery/stimuli. It examines both visual and textual representations of algae in mass media communications covering the harmful algae crisis or “red tide crisis” of 2017 and 2018: an extreme period of aquatic algae proliferation and hazardous …

Katti-Batti : A Digital Tool For Young Adolescents To Transgress The Limitations Of Gender Socialization Through Empathy & Friendship, Chetan Dusane

Masters Theses

The genesis of this project lies in the personal experiences that led me to believe that the culturally learned and perceived gender roles, norms, and expectations limit a person’s health, educational, professional, economic, and social abilities.

The work began by finding the evidence connecting the learned, perceived gender roles, norms, and allied cultural expectations to the ability to think freely. The research revealed the limiting effects of gender roles and norms on self-identity, personal belief systems, and a place’s culture. The study further led to uncovering the link between limiting personal belief systems and cultural environment to the lack of …

Beyond Conscious: The Knowing Of Self-Owned Anxiety, Wenyu Du

Masters Theses

To achieve recognition of when we might under anxiety attack, the first step is to introduce the practice of expressing ourselves with wearable devices- Nudo for users to say “no”, “I am not in a good condition” with no words, gently reveal your emotional status and give you the sense of support. Nudo works like the defense mechanism of humans and gathers our body signals that are triggered from anxiety as a recording piece that allows users to track what’s happening during every specific moment. It also works as a reminder for those who might not recognize their own anxiety. …

Inter - : Design For Fostering Action-Oriented Awareness Towards Sustainable Transition, Elena Danlei Huang

Masters Theses

In order to meet the need for sustainable transition, it is vital for the general public to be aware of the social and ecological interconnectedness within existential climate crisis, local sustainable development, and urban individual’s behavioral patterns. As a method to rebuild interconnectedness, this thesis explores design interventions for fostering action-oriented awareness towards sustainable transition. Jumping out from the current paradigm, it tries to connect the audience to alternative conceptual representations. An integrated theoretical model built around a local contextualized issue is proposed in the thesis, followed by a practice-based case project focusing on Rhode Island Squid Fishery as a …

Uncertainty Wanted: Deconstructing Gender Gap In Parenting Mentality, Zimeng Xiang

Masters Theses

Gender stereotypes propagate through generations like a loop without a clear start or end, constantly reinforcing and being reinforced by the constructed, gendered system of information around us. For this project, I take the start of parenthood - the moment when new parents begin to learn everything about newborn care - as a critical point to encourage gender-neutral parenthood and eventually, to fill the gender gap in parents’ mental load.

Records Of (Un)Learning, Gregory Deddo

Masters Theses

The internal processes by which we remember and learn (mnēmē) are in tension with the exterior mnemonic devices of writing, photography, and archives (hypomnēsis). Attempts to accurately record and document our lives often disrupt the living, intersubjective memory it is meant to aid. This dichotomy plays out in both the interpersonal sphere of relationships and identity, and in the socio-political sphere of history, governance, and economics. Our contemporary postmodern condition, as shaped by technologic developments, is marked by an increased skepticism about testimony, witness, and experience and a greater reliance on data-driven information and the structure …

Blue Loops, Rebecca Senn

Masters Theses

I started threading wires between objects in an attempt at connecting the fragments of my life, winding forms into spiraling webs of meaning. Bluebirds, cartoon toys, Jewish kitsch, 90’s teen angst, immaterial feeling. Wires are squeezed with plaster and smothered in paint, tightly wound, mummified, squeezed to death, or post-death, suspended in an oxygenless void, as if time stopped and all at once we could feel the simultaneity of things — the star hurtling through space, a swimmer falling into water, raindrops sliding off a pair of glasses. I spin wires, squeeze them with wet plaster, mummify them, until they …

The Second Identity: The Human-Otters Ha-Ha - Utopia For Urban Animals, Yuxin Zhang

Masters Theses

The question of proportion between humans and urban animals is always existed but had been ignored for a while. Through COVID19,the early balance, which human as a dominant sign in the urban area seems been slightly broken and many “invisible” animals start to show up. This makes me think that is there another living mode between humans and animals.

The thesis project locates in Singapore. Asa country around by water, Singapore has countless river canal, with some of the rivers are more residential and quieter, some are famous hot tourism point. However, some of the rivers are similar, which because …

Translated Architecture, Ruiqi Zhang

Masters Theses

“Translated Architecture” is an unique psychological implication space that is translated from the spatiality camera language. Its significance lies in the ability to better approach and understand the psychological condition brought by the living environment.

To better understand what the camera language could lead us to, this thesis chooses to take phobias as an entry point to analyze the subtle changes in human psychology under different camera views.phobias like social phobia, Claustrophobia, Agoraphobia on a certain level is a form of mental illness that is related to architectural space. Take Claustrophobia as an example, Claustrophobia is a situational phobia triggered …

Balance The Conversations, Karen Kuo

Masters Theses

This thesis aims to examine the role environmental factors play in people’s experience of the built environment, with a focus on the ongoing debate between individual freedom and collective responsibility of masks in the COVID-19 era. This thesis will argue that a middle ground that balances the relationship between individual and collective pursuits is necessary and can potentially be enabled through design. The project will articulate these ideas by using the debate around mask-wearing as a starting point to develop a broader manifesto forshaping the built environment.

During this ongoing global pandemic, we can’t deny that human behavior has been …

Elsewhere: Impressions Of Sense & Nonsense, Madeline Woods

Masters Theses

I’m not going to give it all away up front, but here are a few things you’ll find inside: a flower that tastes like peppermint, a book that smells like sunscreen, a silver orb that purrs, a woman becoming a tree, a shy rainbow, and a hat that is also a disguise. There are lists, letters, dreams, and notes. I hope there aren’t typos, but I’m only human, after all. There is sense, and there is also nonsense.

If you decide to join me here, we will wander elsewhere — across different kinds of terrain, into sensory experiences, between mediums, …

Fossil Morphology, Leah Zhang

Masters Theses

Fossil Morphology is a multi-media art project based on my research on the coal mining area in East Pennsylvania. It consists of a film, a series of photographs, and a sound installation. Together, the three works form a dialog among each other about the ecology and aesthetics of the region’s coal mining landscape and its underground.

For a long time, coal, as an raw material for mass production, has been understood and examined from its economic values and social meanings. The gradual abandoning of this material by our industry therefore leads to the seemingly inevitable decline of the coal mining …

Dal And Rice, Anushka Divecha

Masters Theses

I have always been a nostalgic person. I have boxes of old photographs, letters, birthday cards and objects from significant days in my life. I have confetti from different concerts, friendship bracelets and old diaries. While typically not represented by keepsakes, memories of food are some of my strongest. They encompass all five senses, which is perhaps why they are so powerful. Every time I smell a spice or taste something familiar, I am instantly transported to a certain place and time.

As a textile artist, I use materials, textures, imagery, and senses to evoke place and time. This year …

Insecurities: Tracing Displacement And Migration, Hammad Abid

Masters Theses

“Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Migration,” the title of both my thesis work and thesis book, calls attention to displacement and forced migration as a disruption in the continuity of place, relationships, identity, memory, and time. Through a collection of textiles, I try to capture the psychological, social, and physical effects of forced migration and communicate the impact of political violence on identity and coexistence.

In this book, I position myself within the context of how the current Indian government is attempting to rewrite the nation’s history and distort India’s pluralistic story. I tell a personal narrative of displacement in harrowing …

After Plastic Waste : Plastic Bottle Knitting Machine - Design For Value Of Recycling Plastic, Du Cheng

Masters Theses

Plastic is the cheapest and most versatile material invented by humans. But with it comes endless pollution. In the face of plastic waste, I need to establish a direct and effective plastic reuse method.

In order to limit plastic waste to a controllable range, I try to reduce the cost of recycled plastics and increase the value of recycled plastics. After research and experimentation, I created a method of turning plastic bottles into plastic cloth through cutting and knitting. This method and material provide a new direction for the reuse of plastics. For the creation of new reuse methods, it …

Rebuilt The Fading Vicinity, Yifan Du

Masters Theses

Something is missing on the scale between me and the whole world. That’s also the dilemma of the Millennials. The giant gap between the ego and the world builds an invisible wall. This invisible barrier makes us nonchalant toward the trivial things happening just right in front of us. Ironically, the nonchalance makes our society more emotional and drastic. We get outraged more easily compare to the past.

How should I invite people to appreciate and care more about our surroundings? How do I rebuild the fading vicinity? Those questions are the starting point of my thesis journey.

Living Objects, Katie Tzu Hua Huang

Masters Theses

Sometimes, I find myself sunk into my memories, during daytime when the sun illuminates through the seam of the shutters in my room, or at midnight, when the world is in deep silence.

The sound of flipping books brings me back to the time when my mom sat in the living room quietly, with a cup of hot black tea as always. At the time when she read, I always found a stream of light illuminating the table, covering her face partially. One page, two pages, and three pages; as she kept flipping, the repetitive sound made the quiet afternoon …

Inside The Bubble 2.0, Sunny Yuqing Ma

Masters Theses

As a designer, I use speculation to observe. I use design to express. I want to hit people's souls directly. I want to create unexpected sparks through relaxed storytelling.

A Family Game: Tell The Stories That Shape Us, Zhuoyan Xie

Masters Theses

There are a lot of books and theories on the market to help improve our communication skills and relationship with others. However, they hardly mention that the fundamental principle behind our relationship to others is how we understand and accept ourselves. The thesis aims to promote our understanding of our own identity and identities of our family members. It is worthy to mention that the thesis is conducted in a Chinese context. The thesis mainly learned from Non-violent communication and theories about identity, especially narrative identity. The deliverables are a set of narrative cards and prompts that can be played …

Kitsch Study And Chinese Kitsch Market, Jiaqi Ellie Liu

Masters Theses

From the old industrial age to the new information age, the accumulation of capital has led to the monopoly of the assets and technology of large enterprises, and the pressure of the middle class is increasing day by day.

At the same time, informatization has led to a substantial increase in the next round of energy and material needs, and therefore human needs for thinking, physical and emotional needs have also increased. Kitsch can meet the thinking and emotional needs of the public. Therefore, it has become the mainstream contemporary aesthetics.

Kitsch art & design are easier to be loved …